


Strings

by paradoxIdolatry



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depersonalization, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mind Control, Non-Consensual Possession, Possession, Puppet Bro, Puppeteering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-04 23:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18354272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxIdolatry/pseuds/paradoxIdolatry
Summary: You were a person once.The reflections of a dying puppet.





	Strings

**Author's Note:**

> Had some thoughts about the relationship between Lil Cal and Bro and the effect that had on him. Also possession isn't quite the word for it, but it's a similar enough idea.

You were a person once.

Well, no, that isn’t entirely accurate.  You think, if asked, you might still be a person.  You’ve got all the general, generic features of a person, sort of.  A body, a mind--doesn’t matter the condition. Not like anyone asks.  And anyway, your defense of yourself aside, the remark does hold water.

You were a person once.

You don’t know when you stopped being a person, really.  You still have all the generic features necessary to pass as a person.  When people on the street pass you, they don’t immediately register that the thing walking in its man suit among them isn’t just like them.  You look the part well.

It’s in acting the part where things start going tits up in a big way.

You were a person once.

Decades ago, but not so many as to make you ancient or some shit like that.  You’re still relatively young, for a thing in a man suit, and especially so for one with something depending on it for survival.  No, you’re not all that old at all, but the process of unbecoming a person was one that started before you were even born, you’d say, if asked.

No one asks.

No one was ever around  _ to  _ ask, except for your best friend in the whole world, but you’re beginning to think--something you haven’t done in a long time--that maybe it was by his doing that you unbecame a person before you ever really got the chance to start.  Or something like that. You haven’t thought in a long time, and starting now is just another headache you really don’t want to deal with.

No, no, no, don’t do that.  Don’t stop thinking now; it’s a luxury you haven’t be afforded in so long.  Fucking focus, jackass. Get it all out before the getting’s gone.

You were a person once, until you weren’t.  Slowly, over time, you were stuck with the knife of devoted companionship and the personhood was let out of you in an ooze so gradual that you never even noticed it happening.  The stuff that should have made you  _ you  _ was siphoned out and flushed down the drain and the man suit that was left was stuffed with cotton and someone else’s ideas of who you should be until you could hold your shape.

You never stopped being you; you clung to the fibers of your man suit like a persistent stain, never truly able to be washed out.  But you were never truly given the chance to be  _ you _ , whole and fully autonomous.  You were ripped open and emptied out in the fucking streets then sewed back up, patched with loving and familiar hands, with strings attached.

You were a person once, until you weren’t anymore.

You became a puppet.

Your best friend in the whole world, who raised you from birth with little help from your distant benefactor, shaped and molded you in his image.  Or, more accurately, the image he had of you in his head. He loved you so, he  _ told  _ you as much all day, every day, his voice a constant and sweet whisper in your ear.  Empty and aching as you were for someone to stick around and care, you ate up every honeyed morsel offered to you until you were stuffed full of it.  You didn’t even mind how the sugar made your stomach hurt.

He loved you, it’s true, but he didn’t love you unconditionally.  You know this now. He loved the idea of you, and the you that wasn’t his ideal had to go.  And so he pushed more and more of his ideal, of himself, into you, until that’s all there was left.  Your skin and him lurking beneath, and beyond that, void.

You had things you liked once, you think.  You liked music. Loved music. Sick beats and deaf jams, with a lyrical flow so hard and fast, sometimes you made your own head spin.  You liked to draw. Ironic comics that were at once heralded as humorous and disturbing, and you didn’t particularly care which reaction they elicited, so long as people were looking.  You loved the weight of live steel in your hands, the way your sword was perfectly balanced for you. It made you feel safe when nothing and nobody else did.

But all of that, gradually, was pushed onto the backburner.  The cottony void consumed them all until they were just  _ things _ , and you think you may have enjoyed them still, but really? You didn’t care much about them at all.  You didn’t care much about anything, and you didn’t have to, with your friend pulling your strings.

It was easier that way.

Didn’t have to think.

Didn’t have to feel.

Didn’t have to take responsibility.

By the time the kid arrived, as you knew he would, there was barely any of you left.  But there was enough.

Just enough.

You were a person once, and then you were a puppet, but there was still just enough slack in the strings to give them a tug now and then.  Nudge yourself in the right direction. It was far from enough;  _ far _ , far from enough, and you damn well know it.  You can say you tried, and it’s true, you did. You wanted to teach the kid how to survive a world gearing up to chew him up and spit him out, and so you did, while picking the bits of him out of your teeth.

You didn’t know how to connect to him; you’ve never known how to act the part of the person you were supposed to be.  You knew how to act like a caricature of a person with your puppets, your comrades in stitches and strings, to the entertainment of others (in whatever flavor those people elected to devour your entertainment).  But connection was not something you had ever done, or  _ had  _ to do, until suddenly this kid fell out of the goddamn sky and creamed your favorite record shop, and he was all yours.

Your own little person to raise, pushing out some of that cotton and void as he nestled deep into the core of you, like a sword through the chest.

His arrival spelled the end of you, and you knew it while not ever quite knowing why you knew.  It was strange, and you held him at a distance, always, but you knew you still had to do right by this kid.  Somehow, some way. For the first time in a decade, you thought that maybe you should scrape together the stain of you and form some semblance of a person to try and raise this kid.

You never figured out how.

You had stopped being a person so long ago that that very notion escaped you.  The kid became a fixture in your life, and you provided for him. Sometimes, you did more than just provide; you gave him gifts.  Hand-me-downs, usually, but the occasional splurge of an iPhone or drum machine were given without fanfare. Those times, the you-stain had managed to overcome the void and reach out, and for a moment--a fleeting moment--you connected.

And then you were gone.

Your best friend was awful, then, more awful than before.  He whispered for you to hurt the kid, and you know he whispered similar things to him as he slept, and you tried not to listen to him then.

But you did listen.  You did, under the guise of training him for this fucked up world, but even still, you managed to tug your strings.  You held back.

Your best friend wanted you to make the kid unbecome a person too, but not in the way he made you unbecome.  He wanted you to make him a stain on the sidewalk; paste, thrown away and forgotten. And you said no.

You still hurt the kid, but in this, you said no.  You held on.

From there, you’re sure that the reader knows the story.  You were a person, turned puppet, turned game construct who tried to cheat the system because you knew the kid and his friends were fucked.  You wanted to win the game for him, or at least force their hands to give you a chance to do so, and then?

And then.

You were run through by that demon fuck’s sword and left to bleed to an inglorious and quiet end, as a ghost of your kid brother wept over you.  You didn’t deserve more than that; you are fairly certain you didn’t deserve the tears that  _ were  _ shed.

You were a puppet, and that explains your actions, but that doesn’t excuse them.  You sort of wish you had anything left in you to feel guilty or embarrassed of yourself for the hell you put him through.  Is that enough?

No, it’s not.

You were a person once, and then you were a puppet, and now you’re dead.


End file.
